


Good Mourning

by InfraVioletUltraRed



Series: From Radish Farmer to the Zora Royal Consort [21]
Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Hylian and Zora mourning traditions, Other, oh and, uh Dorephan dies in this I'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 15:43:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19321186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InfraVioletUltraRed/pseuds/InfraVioletUltraRed
Summary: Reader is awoken from their slumber, and reintroduced to the pups, now grown to the age Sidon was when he met Reader. Then, an expected tragedy strikes the Zora royals.





	Good Mourning

You awoke to the sound of your name.

When you opened your eyes, and they had adjusted to the light that hadn’t hit them in years, your other senses seemed to spark to life, too. You weren’t floating anymore, so you were lying, wet and in a clump of flowers, on your back on the surface of the draining Cryonis bed.

Finally, your faculties settled back into your head, and you actually looked up and around. Hovering above you was Sidon.

You hoped.

It sure looked like Sidon, though. He offered you a hand, and you sat up.

You rubbed an eye absently and tried to look around. “How long was I comatose?” You asked, voice coming out in a dry croak.

“Ninety-eight years. It’s good to have you back, my pearl.”

“But _I’m_ Pearl!” She replied, clearly joking this time (unlike when she had been a young pup). You laughed, and she ambled over to you.

You were going to greet her, but you were swept off your feet before you could even so much as clasp your daughter’s hand.

“Ah-ah-ah!” Sidon tutted to Pearl. “Me first. My consort. Your parent, but my spouse.”

Pearl sighed. “That’s not very royal of you, Daddy.” He only laughed.

You, however, looked down and let out a tiny peep. You were much higher off the ground than you had been the last time Sidon had picked you up like this. You clung to him, making sure you wouldn’t fall.

“Did you have a growth spurt?” you asked him hesitantly.

He stopped nuzzling your cheek to answer you. “Ah, yes. About that.” He set you down, and you could see now how much wider the height gap had gotten between you. You had always been diminutive beside him, of course, since even Link wasn’t much taller than waist-high to Sidon, but this was something else.

It was all proportional, of course; he hadn’t just shot straight upwards with no lateral expansion, but still. He was much bigger now than he’d been when you’d last seen him.

“Good Goddesses,” you breathed, craning your neck to look up at him.

He laughed softly again and scooped you back up. “That’s why I picked you up.” He told you. “So.” He shifted you slightly in his arms, so it would be more comfortable for both of you. “Welcome back, pearl in my ocean and moon in my sky. I’ve missed you dearly. I brought you fresh flowers every day.”

“Is that what those were?” You asked. You had known there were flowers around you when you’d awoken, but hadn’t know their origin. Now you conjured the mental image of Sidon leaving his sleeping pool every morning, to go collect flowers, and bring them to your bedside, kneeling to place them in the water where you slept. It was sweet. You stroked his cheek as he continued speaking.

When he paused, something dawned on you.

“Oh!” you called out. “What about Lotus and Etora?”

Sidon smiled. “I think they’re out in the pup pools, watching the pups while I tended to you.”

“Can we go see them?” You asked.

He nodded.

While you walked, you asked him why they were essentially babysitting when he had never done anything like that.

“That you know of,” he replied, teeth sparkling when he smiled this time. “Mipha did before she became a Champion. I did, on rare occasions, mostly before I met you and Link. It’s almost a tradition for the Zora royal family now, I suppose. To get the populace used to us, and so we know them.” He shrugged, which had you bouncing a little in his arms. “It removes the barrier of separation, encouraging leadership and protective feelings in the royal in question, and trust in their skills in the other Zora. At least, that’s what Father told me.” He finished with another little shrug. “It worked well enough for me. And it’s made excellent citizens of our offspring.”

You smiled. “They’ve been good while I was gone?”

“The best.” He set you down at the edge of a pup pool, and Etora leapt from the water, landing at your side.

She grinned wide, sharp teeth glinting before she hugged you. “I missed you,” she mumbled into your hair. You hugged her back, just as tightly. “I was good, just like you told me to be.”

What a fine young adult she seemed to have become.

Lotus had gotten out of the water more slowly, but he was at your side now, with a small smile. He really did look like a carbon copy of Sidon. All he was missing was the scar. That wasn’t to say there was nothing unique about him to differentiate him from his father, but the resemblance was equal parts uncanny and endearing.

He took your hand, squeezing it.

“How did you sleep?” He asked it as simply as if you had spent the night elsewhere, not a century floating with flowers in the throne room.

“I slept fine,” you reassured him, squeezing his hand back.

Pearl had been trailing after you and Sidon, and now she joined you two and her siblings. Finally, you got a better look at her. She looked like what you remembered of the statue of Mipha in the square, though in a rosy pink instead of the bright red of Mipha and Sidon. You took both her hands in yours and tried your best to kiss her forehead—even as the shortest of the three siblings, she was still much taller than you-- and then you gathered your three children together, asking them to lead you on a tour of the Domain, since you were sure it had changed since you’d been gone.

Your home hadn’t changed too much around you, thank the goddesses. After you’d returned from the tour of the Domain, Sidon sat you down to have a more serious chat with you. Once you were seated at the edge of Sidon’s resting pool, he explained the situation.

“It’s a mix of misfortune and anticipation that led me to wake you up,” he explained. “My father isn’t long for this world anymore, and he asked that he get to spend the rest of his time with his whole family. Not just me, not just the pups. You too.”

“Oh,” you said quietly. “Well, I can go see him now, if he wanted to see me right away.”

Sidon waved his hand. “No, no. He said today was for you, me, Pearl, Lotus, and Etora.”

“Have you ever noticed we say their names out of birth order?” you asked him.

He paused, then laughed. “I hadn’t thought about it. But we do say them in ascending order of syllables.”

“Oh, true,” you replied, kicking your feet in the water.

Sidon slid into his pool, turning right away so he could lean on your legs like he used to. “I truly have missed you. Hearing you speak and seeing your eyes, mostly. After all, I did look at you plenty over the last 98 years. Sometimes, if no one was around, I would kneel at the side of your Cryonis bed and just run my fingertips over your nose and cheekbones. Or the tips of your ears. Just so I could touch you.”

“What did I feel like? Was I cold? Stiff?”

He shook his head. “You felt the same to me as if you’d been asleep on your mat here. Whatever Purah did, it preserved you in what looked to be a peaceful rest. I can only hope that was your experience of it.”

“I think so,” you said calmly. “I dreamed a little bit.”

His eyes widened in interest. “Oh? What about?”

“A lot of stuff. Hyrule. Link. You, sometimes. It was more like memories than dreams my mind invented.”

“No prophetic visions?” He asked with a little chuckle.

“Goddesses, no,” you snorted. “That sure would have been something. Born a radish farmer, kind-of-died a royal consort, and resurrected as an oracle.”

“Given two exciting lives by the goddesses.”

The pair of you laughed.

Dinner that night was more opulent than the four members of your family had eaten in years, they told you. They had to celebrate, getting their spouse and parent back. You were just glad they remembered to gut your fish before cooking it.

You didn’t go to sleep that night-- you weren’t tired. You were sick of sleeping, after 98 years of it. So you sat by Sidon until he fell asleep, and then you went out to your rock.

You’d missed this. This view of the Domain had featured in your dreams fairly often. Home. It still glowed a green-blue in the moonlight, like it had years ago.

You still weren’t tired, but you did get a little sleepy, full of food and happy to be home.

_

But unfortunately, it had been a good thing that Sidon had woken you when he did. Only two weeks later, you were learning what a Zora royal funeral was like.

There was, of course, prayer. Lots of it. For three days, the whole Domain gathered before the statue of Hylia, mumbling prayers that dipped and rose like the sea from dawn to dusk.

That wasn’t much of a surprise, really. What did surprise you a little were the other customs.

You were told by Sidon that you could dress however Hylians traditionally dressed to mourn, so you had, trading your blue and white garments for black, adding some more archaic practices as well, since they felt more appropriately formal to you.

Sidon followed the traditions of the Zora, removing his armor, and even his collar. You moved to take yours off, too, but he stopped you.

“It can stay on you, if you want. But I’m the surviving son. This is all to signify that no armor can protect you from the heart-piercing pain of loss.”

You nodded in understanding, taking off your collar, and tearing a little bit of black cloth from the hem of your clothing. You tied it around Sidon’s arm.

“Hylians wear a small black armband for as long as they mourn,” you said. “Or at least, they used to. They physically carry the weight of the loss with them that way.”

So all he wore now was his sash and the armband. You wore only your clothing. No adornments.

A Zora prince and his Hylian consort, you led the Domain in sending off their king.

As you watched the burial float, Sidon pulled you against him. He wiped your eyes as carefully as he could, knowing sharkskin scratched, and then he spoke, to you and you alone.

“You know what this means, don’t you?”

You figured you did, but you asked anyway. “What, Sidon?”

“The advisors are going to be planning the coronation for any day now. You’re here. I’m ready.” He stroked your hair. “We’re about to begin a new era, you and I.”

In a way, you couldn’t wait.

**Author's Note:**

> this is the penultimate work in this series! I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it. c:


End file.
